I did bump hunting for my PhD in particles a decade and a half ago. This is the way life goes -- you get a signal that almost has enough significance to really believe -- then it collapses when you pile in more data. If a journal is filled with papers each having a single p=0.05 result, then one out of 20 of them is reasonably expected to be wrong!

They need more energy credits. I know that Chairman Yang has repeatedly suggested that a series of three boreholes are completed near the capital, which would allow the commencement of discovering the secrets of pre-sentient algorithms. Once this happens, it's only a matter of building enough condensers to harvest the required food to grow a larger population of Thinkers. With a viable mind/machine interface in addition to the overwhelming benefits of telepathy in battling the the Hive drones, transcendence

My Bet is that the Higgs doesn't exist. It's only in the standard model to support Massless particles like Massless Neutrinos, but the Solor Neutrino Problem [wikipedia.org] already puts serious cracks in that assumption. So my bet is that there is no such thing as a massless particle.

New data presented at a conference in India shows no new signs of the Higgs. The signal was probably just a statistical fluctuation."

Has anyone considered that the Higgs may actually be just a statistical fluctuation, a mathematical artifact required to both satisfy the symmetry of the fundamental particle structure and at the same time insure the uncertain nature of... well, nature.

I know this may sound like (and it may actually be) a silly question, but I am serious in asking it.

That's not an accurate way of looking at the statistics, but it's a common mistake (and most likely one I've made myself).

The confidence levels (such as 99%, 95%) tell you very little directly about the probability that a result is correct. What they do tell you is the probability of getting a false positive - if you were to do 100 separate searches at a 95% confidence interval, you'd get a positive result in about 5 even if there were no Higgs there.

Given the number of potential places to search and the number of experiments done, you'd expect some false positives at these confidence levels. The standard for claiming a discovery is 5 sigma, which is something like a 99.9999% confidence level.

The standard for claiming a discovery is 5 sigma, which is something like a 99.9999% confidence level.

Ah, if only all sciences were this rigorous. Meanwhile, much of psychology, sociology, and even medicine is out there looking at 95% confidence levels (often even juggling enough variables that a number of correlations will shake out of random data)...

I know it's impossible to hold all sciences to such a standard, given the cost of subjects for many human science experiments, but I do wish we could put something like your post in bold at the beginning of most articles.

It's an artifact of the fact that they operate on a higher layer of abstraction of the problem.

When working at larger scales with many more individual events (think biology as opposed to chemistry) going through and monitoring every single event occurring at the same level of detail as pure physics just can't be done.

So we abstract it away adding error to the results while still typically coming up with hypothesis that are right enough to be useful.

The confidence levels... tell you very little directly about the probability that a result is correct.

More than that -- in frequentist statistics, there's no such concept as the "probability that a result is correct" once it's been observed; it is either correct or not. The probability only applies when observations haven't been made yet. Your explanation is probably the best way to think about p values and such, in that it is both correct and intuitive -- a 95% confidence means that before you did the experiment, that is the probability that the result you'd get after doing it would be correct.

What kind of "faith" exposes itself to falsification through experimentation? What kind of "faith" in an entity has all of its greatest practitioners carving out all the places where we can be sure it doesn't exist, and prepared to face the potential truth that it simply doesn't at all? What kind of "faith" is based on making educated guesses at first, but ultimately wanting to know one way or another, of demanding evidence?

Perhaps you aren't acquainted with Buddhism. From the Kalama Sutra (http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an03/an03.065.than.html):

"So, as I said, Kalamas: 'Don't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, "This contemplative is our teacher." When you know for yourselves that, "These qualities are unskillful; these qualities are blameworthy; these qualities are critic

That's a simplistic view of faith......the idea that you must only believe and will never have any evidence at all.

In practice, faith in God is much like faith in the Higgs boson.....scientists believe (faith is just the noun form of believe), or have faith, that a Higgs boson exists, so they are performing experiments to see if they can find it. Similarly, if you have faith in religion, you will follow that religion, and eventually you either will or won't see the results the religion promised if you fo

Principle of causation, that for every effect (my existance), there is a cause, combined with the fact that we know that we exist (our very postulating it proves it, as a non-entity can not have rational thought), and the fact that the universe can manifestly not create itself (to do so would be to invoke nonsense).

Throw in a dose of entropy (how can chaos organize itself into a stable state for the big bang?), and the question of why a stable state such as the "big bang ball" would proceed without some cau

Throw in a dose of entropy (how can chaos organize itself into a stable state for the big bang?

You ask some reasonable questions, but this is the one that I feel like replying to-

You would do better to ask how chaos can avoid organizing itself into a stable state for the big bang. By definition, anything that can happen in a chaotic system must eventually happen, no? One of the better analogies I've heard is that if an immortal were to patiently and repeatedly shuffle a deck of cards, the shuffling would ev

You would do better to ask how chaos can avoid organizing itself into a stable state for the big bang. By definition, anything that can happen in a chaotic system must eventually happen, no?

That is a good reply; but it seems to create a new problem-- perfectly organized stable states dont "big bang", and if they do they are not stable states. This is the bigger problem I would like to hear an answer to-- what caused the "bang"?

he reason is known as the law of parsimony or Occam's Razor [wikipedia.org]. We can either have a prime mover that has always existed (with a universe that has a definite beginning), or a universe that has always existed (with no prime mover). It's bad enough to violate causation (each scenario does that- either the prime mover or the universe are assumed to have no antecedent), but the existence of a prime mover is an additional assumption that has no explicative power.

Im aware of Occam's Razor, and it is a part of my argument;) The issue I have with a self-existent universe, is that eternal things tend to not change; if they did, they would not be eternal. At the very least, every observation of the universe I am aware of is plag

No such thing is known- consensus is that the big bang occurred at a given time, and before that, our current model breaks down as all the universe's mass converges on a point particle and we get errors from plugging values of zero in for certain variables. That's my understanding, anyway. What happened before that is by no means certain, but saying "A prime mover (who always existed) caused the big bang" only moves the mystery further away without clarifying

So what does that mean, exactly, when we know that the universe hasn't always existed?

By definition of "universe", that statement is always false. There is no sense of physical existence outside of the universe. That the more restricted component, the observable universe has an apparent start date is peculiar, but it doesn't imply a cause.

It depends on how you define universe. The two most common I have heard (paraphrased) are "all that is", in which case God would be included, and the "natural universe', which as I understand is sort of a "domain" of information; the boundary outside of which no information can cross by means within the universe.

I am probably paraphrasing it badly, but in either definition it would seem that gathering information about its formation or what is outside it is impossible from human perspective.

I am probably paraphrasing it badly, but in either definition it would seem that gathering information about its formation or what is outside it is impossible from human perspective.

There are deeper problems here than paraphrasing, No information means it is not part of our universe. Period. "All that is" has no meaning when you have no knowledge about what is "all", "is", or even if there is an "all" or "is" to speak of outside of what you can observe. Similarly, formation of the universe or the concept of "outside" has no meaning beyond what we can observe.

In other words, empirically we have hard limited on what we can know or deduce philosophically. This goes back to the original

This isnt about doing anyone favors or sticking it to the other guy. I, and I assume the others in this discussion, are concerned with truth, not wielding words like a bludgeon. If you are concerned with "doing the religious guys a favor", perhaps you have exactly the wrong view of reason, science, and philosophy.

Why do you suppose the greek ending "sophia" is in "philosophy", I might ask?

It's worth noting here that science is a human creation by any of its definitions, whether it be a formal, methodical study of an arbitrary field of knowledge, or the empirical sense of one of our best attempts to understand reality. It is our attempt to understand something.

I have always thought of God (If he exists) and the Big Bang as one.An infinite amount of potential energy seething chaotically, timelessly.

Whatever works for you, but the dictionary does not list "An infinite amount of potential energy seething chaotically, timelessly." among its definitions for "god". If you're willing to alter the definition until it fits the phenomenon, then why not cut to the chase and define god as "An imaginary friend used by fanatics to lend a sense of substance and meaning to their

This is as good an argument against god as it is against the big bang.

Couldn't have said it better. The number of people i've heard say 'but it makes no sense that the universe just appeared' but are happy to just accept that some god presence can do exactly the same thing they just dismissed as nonsense astounds me.

To me it is the equivalent of answering 'but how does....' with 'magic'.

No, the general thought is not that God ever just came into existence; the entire argument is that he is eternal.

The reason that same argument cannot be applied to the universe, according to my above argument, is that the universe is in a state of change, and systems in a state of change always (so far as we have ever been able to tell) seek an equilibrium; if they do not, you simply need to widen your scope to capture more of the universe, and you will see that principle in action.

Introducing a new cause (god) does not solve this problem. This is not an argument for the existence of god.

By the context, I assume you meant to write "a new effect". But the law of causation does not say that every THING has a cause, merely that every effect has a cause. That is, anything in a state of change must have a cause. God is understood to be unchanging-- outside of "time" if you will (understanding "time" as "state of change").

The second law of thermodynamics captures the evolution of the universe. It really doesn't say anything about the initial conditions. Again, you are asking questions about what caused the big bang. Quite frankly, the energy scale immediately following the big bang is so huge that we will probably never be able to understand the behavior of physics immediately following the big bang, much less before.

I do not think it is unreasonable for one to ask "what caused the 'initial state' to enter a state of change", nor to try to reason out whether it is logically possible for

a God that never changes (and therefore is permitted to "exist" without "causation") is a God that cannot make a decision, and therefore may never act (and therefore cannot create the universe)

Unless of course such a God does not make decisions in the temporal way we do, and is simultaneously omnipotent, omniscient, AND self-existent. I am not aware of any class of reformed thought which thinks that God is suprised by new events and must then make a decision; he is described as having had a plan from the beginning.

And tbqh, I cannot see how that statement is less reasonable than many of the alternative theories (spontaneous generation, self creation, etc).

Now, accepting your "the universe was created exactly how it is," premise, can we please do some work? Oh, that's right. You're back to needing science to do anything useful. It's almost like you refuse to hear the argument:

Who said I was pitting the two against each other? Most of my arguments rely on logical deduction and rational thought, which are prerequisites to science. I see no need to separate the two, since both are concerned with universal truth and both are concerned with the cause of all things.

I would argue, only partly in jest, that if my beliefs are correct, you are back to needing God in order to accomplish anything useful;) After all, science doesnt "do" anything; it is a systematic approach to gaining kn

I should have edited this in:I AM making a claim, that God exists, and is responsible for all things. I do not intend to get more specific than THAT in this discussion because how we arrived at today is not what the discussion was about; the starter comment was that there is no "rational" argument for God, and I have provided several well known, old, and a few of my own arguments, and a good many people remark that they think they carry some weight.

I gave a number of arguments for why I do not think the universe can be self existant, and I have yet to hear anyone reconcile them except for one fellow who mentioned "Ergodic theory" as a way of trying to explain why a perpetual bang-crunch cycle is plausible. I would have to research that more, but he is the only one I would give a bye to in this discusion. Everyone else seems to completely avoid the topic of entropy and the impossiblity of a perpetually in-motion universe that has always been.

Again... the conclusions must be that either god has always existed, or something else has which effectively "predates" the universe to have spawned it... something that we have absolutely *NO* evidence of, and I can think of no remotely compelling reason to believe it,

No scientific evidence, that is true; to gather information from outside or from before the universe is impossible by very definition. It is nevertheless fair to look at what we have and posit several explainations of what could have caused it, look at what we have now, and try to infer the most likely cause.

Presumably, some people choose the former option because their own experiences in life convince them of the veracity of that notion, in much the same way as one's sensibilities convince them of the reality that they experience in a day-to-day basis. It's hardly scientific, but it's still a lot more to go on than the alternative.

Properly applied, it is perfectly valid. This is part of what I am saying, yes. I find a number of examples where I have found the Bible to be more in line with reality than the notion that I exist w

There's a really simple answer to the "first cause" question, and that's that there was no first time. There is no time zero. There is no minimum time. In math-speak, it's an open set. Every instant was preceded by another instant--note that this does NOT require an infinite number of seconds, just an infinite resolution. That avoids the problem with first cause.

Seconds are irrelevant; time is a state of change, and you are postulating an infinite (or immeasurable, to be precise) amount of change from whenever until now; but if that is the case, then uncountable uncountables have occured, and I would ask why this perpetual motion machine has not reached equilibrium yet.

As another poster points out, even if you do postulate a god as a creator, you have the question what created the creator

If I postulated that God was both a cause and an event, you are right, the entire model would crumble. But what I am postulating is that God is the prime cause, and not an effect at all-- that he is

But what I am postulating is that God is the prime cause, and not an effect at all-- that he is unchanging and eternal.

You've just wrapped up a bunch of incomprehensible quantities and called it "God" (itself an incredibly overloaded term) and then pretend this answer is more satisfactory than a universe that starts from a mathematical singularity. Your hypothesis provides no value, no predictions, no anything. It's strictly "God of the Gaps".

I'll fully admit that a universe without cause is incomprehensible to me, but then so is a universe of infinite causes, and even more so a supernatural God without a cause. However, at

People are a superstitious and cowardly lot - so they imagine themselves an imaginary friend to protect them from all those other imaginary boogeymen.

Or did you by "rational basis for believing in God" actually mean "rational basis which would promote belief in God"?Cause with current, 21st century's, understanding of psychology, medicine, mental disorders, applied pharmacology, logic, philosophy etc., belief in gods is nothing more than an attempt to ignore the problems until they disappear on their own.An

There are indeed rational reasons for anyone who cares to look, and there have been for thousands of years. If you cared to hear such arguments (and honestly, it would look rather bad if after such statements you refused to let yourself hear them), I would be happy you to point you in the right direction.

If you are looking for more classical arguments, Thomas Aquinas is rather famous for his Summa Theoligica-- this [wikipedia.org] appears to be what you are looking for (in english, too).

There is also the quite old argument that Paul made, that the existence of a conscience in the human heart (or mind, or however you wish to term it) is proof of some higher moral standard to which we all find ourselves accountable to. CS Lewis sums this up quite nicely in Mere Christianity-- the first 20 or so pages sum the argument up qu

In general, Aquinas finds something which he thinks he can prove exists, and calls that god. Of course, you can do that, but it doesn't really speak well of god if you have to do that. As for his individual arguments:
1: The unmoved mover kind of went out the window with quantum mechanics. Also, it assumes a finite amount of time has gone by.
2: First Cause: If god caused the universe, what caused god? If god needs no cause, then why does the universe need a cause? And, again, it assumes a universe that has

In general, Aquinas finds something which he thinks he can prove exists, and calls that god

Im not sure that does justice to his argument, or really gets where he is going. The question as I read it was that "Why must there be an initial cause that you call God", and Aquinas sets out to show that you must have had an "unmoved mover". If you wish not to call that God, that does not change the thrust of his argument, that you still need an eternal, uncaused cause that is separate and apart from all things, and superior to all things in nature.

If god caused the universe, what caused god? If god needs no cause, then why does the universe need a cause? And, again, it assumes a universe that has a finite past.

The problem with this sort of argument is atheists in general consider these arguments as falsified. Regarding for example the qualitative assessments of "good" and "evil", they come up with two answers, namely there is no "good" or "evil" and these terms can be defined in the context of evolution - what is good for the survival of the group and what is "evil" or detrimental to its survival.

They have similar issues with the other arguments. While I agree with you that belief in a deity(or deities) is logica

The problem with this sort of argument is atheists in general consider these arguments as falsified. Regarding for example the qualitative assessments of "good" and "evil", they come up with two answers, namely there is no "good" or "evil" and these terms can be defined in the context of evolution - what is good for the survival of the group and what is "evil" or detrimental to its survival.

And yet they utterly ignore why those arguments have weight-- because one of the main premises is that we all have some kind of natural law on our hearts.

I suppose you could try to deny the truth of it, but when scores of scholars throughout the ages give reference to it across scores of different cultures, one begins to wonder whether TRUE absurdity is trying to deny its existence.

I happen to think sFurbo misunderstood 2-3 of Aquinas arguments completely, gave a fairly good reply to the 4th, and then made an arbitrary and undefended statement about the 5th. That hardly counts as falsification in my book.

"Just ignore logic for a second and you'll see what I'm saying".

And now I am convinced you have looked at none of the arguments at all, since they all require you to put on your logic cap and think.

This hardly does your credibility any good, when you will attack statements without understanding what they are, or when you will sling mud over what

All of the provided "arguments" have had people explain why they are incorrect. The credible response from that would be to either explain why the refutes are incorrect or to fix the arguments. This never happens, however.

Um, thats flat out not true. If you cared to do some research you would see refutations of theologians, and then the theologian responding, and back and forth. Off the top of my head I know Lewis had back-and-forth discussions with a large number of people, and gave public talks where he responded to such "refutations".

The means have been provided. If you want to say the belief is rational then you have to use reason to show that.

What happens when said refutations are themselves flawed, as is quite often the case?

I didn't see any of that here. I saw two jumps from "morality", "good" and "evil" to "therefore there must be a god". The most famous idea from pascal's pensees seems to be Pascal's Wager which is one of the worst arguments for God I have ever heard.

Not all of Pascal's Pensees are directly "arguments for God" in and of themselves, and I dont think the Wager falls into that category; the version of the Pensees I have with commentary notes "..Yet it is not his central concern, the thing closest to his heart. It is only one step on the way, one possible means to an end." The wager is IMO (as Pascal really didnt give intros to his Pensees) an argument for why considering belief in God is rational; He doesnt say that "therefore belief in God is proven".

I have never read the Pensees so I cannot really comment on them. I am very confident that they do not offer very good reasoning and fall into the same category as most arguments for god.

Why are you certain of that? It sounds like you are presupposing there can be no good argument for God, despite no rational basis for that belief.

Makes the jump from logic to morality and nobility then back to logic. Concepts of morality are, by definition, irrational.

You are giving this premise, and you clarify what you mean by it, but offer no real logical argument for it other than opinion ("[i think] they are fuzzy by nature"). Most of the arguments I have seen along the lines of morality (technically ethics, as morality is the "acted-out ethical system of a people") are based on the assumption that all men share some por

Morality has proven to be fuzzy. Nobody agrees on morality nor can they show a reason for one thing to be more moral than another.

I could apply your reasoning to the disagreeing models of the universe (string theory and whatnot), but the fact that there are differences and disagreements doesnt mean that they are all wrong; this has been addressed, and the general response is that while there may be differences, you will never find a society that has esteemed cowards, or liars, or thieves, or murderers (though you do indeed find societies that esteem those who are good soldiers). The details are not what the point is, the fact that th

Indeed, it would be more rational, if they didn't insist on using their god to decide how everyone else should live. They do insist on doing so, so it is rational to counter them, as I for one don't want to give up my cotton/polyester blend, or whatever they have decided their god hates today.

Science is "looking" for the Higgs Boson particle. They THINK (believe) it exists, but have no "Proof" it exists. They are falsifying NOTHING by looking for it.

Nonsense. The Higgs Boson is a predicted particle of the Standard Model, and the same theory which predicts it also constrains the energies over which it could exist. Many parts of this range have already been excluded. If all of this range is excluded, then they have falsified the prediction made by the Standard Model.

If something like the Higgs nevertheless exists, it isn't the one predicted by the Standard Model. That prediction will have been falsified.

But the point I was making was that people BELIEVE it exists, and are looking for it, without any proof that it DOES exist. In fact, we're spending BILLIONS of looking for it, so I actually hope they DO find it. But as of this moment, it makes a perfect example of where FAITH gets applied by those that deny it has any real value.

It is definitely true that people are looking for the Higgs Boson based upon faith, but the trouble is that faith is an overloaded word.

The faith in science asks you to take nothing for granted. You can ask, "Why do we think the Higgs Boson exists?" and, eventually, this line of questioning will drill down to a point that references repeatable, reliable observations in the physical world. Now, it is true that most people (myself included) aren't going to go through that line of questioning and drill

Was Aristarchus of Samos relying on faith when he proposed a heliocentric solar system in the 3rd century BC, deliberately ignoring the repeatable facts that the epicyclists brought up against his theory, such as that they couldn't measure parallax motion of the stars? But was he right?

This actually isn't quite true. There is one fundamental assumption that science makes. It assumes that all phenomena are the result of natural laws acting on stuff. There is also a lesser assumption that this is actually explainable.

The result is that if a god (pick any god you care to name) or some other supernatural entity came down and worked some miracles, the miracles would be studied and once enough data was gathered, appropriate modifications to the currently understood physical laws would be mad

If we already had proof that it does or doesn't exist, we wouldn't need to go looking. That's what science is, to go looking for the unknown and the unexplained and you can't do that without observation. And of course if we're spending BILLIONS we spend them where we think there's something interesting, not just trying things at random. And that's the whole difference, faith is happy just to be faith. A scientist may believe in a model but he always wants to test it against reality. You are quite clearly sh

The difference between the presentation of the Higgs Boson and God is slight, but important.

Whenever I read about the Higgs, the reader is reminded that it has not yet been located, it is being rigorously searched for, and/or it is a best-guess theory that fits nicely into the Standard Model. It is assumed to exist, though I have a feeling nobody would be terribly upset if a better theory came around to account for its lack of existence.

Whenever I read about God, it's implicitly assumed that he exists, he's

Looking for the aether (and failing to do so with the Michelson-Morley experiment) is a hallmark of science and ended up with the acceptance of the theory of relativity.

Just not finding the Higgs boson where we expect it to be could already lead to many discoveries or changes. This is not useless science, it WILL have impacts one way or another. There is also a relatively high probability that a definitive result will arise, either by finding it or concluding it does not exist (always within reasonable doub

One that has no problem changing its beliefs? If you take someone else's word for something its faith so unless you understand why they are saying this is not the Boson they're looking for and how they got the evidence to come to that conclusion its faith for you.

Even if I was fully versed in all the physics, the engineering of the LHC and the detectors involved, and all statistical analysis, I'd still be taking their word that what they were saying actually happened. Without actually reproducing their experiment from the digging of the subterranean chamber on up, I would have to take their word for it.

So sure, it's trivially true to say that anything which you have not personally experienced* you are taking on "faith", but in saying so you have trivialized the mea

I'll probably get down-modded for pointing out your ignorance, and I know that faith is the atheist's F word around here, but you are sadly confused that there is only one type of faith. There is a world of difference between blind faith and real faith.

First, I am not an atheist. Second I know there are many definitions of "faith", including very trivial ones where other words serve better to express the intended meaning. I was presuming we were talking about "faith" of types where the OP's original and subsequent statements were meaningful, not banal and pointless.

Assuming you mean something not banal and pointless, then I'm at a loss for what you're characterizing as "blind" vs "real" faith. What is faith in God? What is faith in the potential of hu

> our definition of 'real faith' sounds more like 'expectation' to me.

No, faith requires action. Passively expecting something to happen without doing anything is not faith, just a belief, or maybe even hope.

> With regards to your comment that scientists have *faith* that the Scientific process leads us to a better understanding of the universe - the very fact that you are using a computer to send this message is clearly evidence that it does.

You don't know much about the higgs if you think that their is no evidence that it exists.No experimental viewing of the higgs does not equal no evidence.Their is lots and lots of experimental and theoretical evidence that it exists, still since we have yet to find it after searching for so long the evidence against it is also adding up.

I can't do much more to educate you than repeat what I just said. They don't "believe" it exists. It is an hypothesis based on models that have been shown to have predictive value. Now they are trying to confirm that hypothesis. If the hypothesis is confirmed great. If not new hypothesis will come. There is no faith here. If there were faith they wouldn't bother looking for it and try to look for data to confirm or disprove their models. They'd just assume it to be true.

Scientists who see a theory that in many other respects explaining observations also predicting a particle that is more difficult to find. Yes, the Standard Model may end up having to be heavily modified if Higgs cannot be found, but throwing out an entire theory prematurely seems pretty bizarre to me.

That's science... If the theory predicts the Higgs should be found at a certain range, and it isn't, then the theory was wrong, and it's back to the drawing board. This really isn't that hard of a concept to grasp if you want to. I have a feeling though that you just like the game you're playing.

Translation: I'm a complete fucktard who reads the first paragraphs of SciAm articles, and somehow, due to the extraordinary combination of intellectual arrogance and a near lack of intellectual function, I shall post these grand declarative statements on/.!

I'm afraid that for your viewpoint to qualify as real science you have to get your hands dirty and come up with a competing theory that not only explains all of the measurements that have been performed in the past (not just by hand-waving arguments but actual numbers) and also makes predictions that can be tested. Do you have one of these or is this just some gut feeling?

Also, it's only called the "God" particle because the original phrase "God damned particle" wasn't very PC to publish. Joking I am not:

"The Higgs boson is the particle that is thought to give everything else in the universe mass, but that bit of theoretical physics is unlikely to be the reason most people have heard of it. Its theistic nickname was coined by Nobel-prize winning physicist Leon Lederman, but Higgs himself is no fan of the label. "I find it embarrassing because, though I'm not a believer myse